Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

McCloy: ChatGPT personalization and custom preferences directly alter AI search retrieval and sources

Robert McCloy · AI is Eating Search · Jul 23, 2025 · at 29:06

Robert McCloy, co-founder of Scrunch AI, explains how ChatGPT's custom instructions and user memory alter search query behavior compared to traditional web search engines.

0:00 / 0:28exact quote · 28.3s
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“ChatGPT personalization, memories, just explicit preferences, if you set them up, do definitely affect the results you get. Now, Again, obviously, there's, they're still using traditional search, so the search index itself is not necessarily personalized, but you can definitely tell ChattoBD, right, like, I don't want to read anything from these sources, and it will try to obey. That can affect both, like, what it's searching for, and also which sources it prefers, and ultimately how it presents information from those sources to you, right?”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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